1 Victim In Nn Car Crash Still Hospitalized

NEWPORT NEWS — Neither occupant was wearing a seat belt at the time of the fatal accident, police say.

A 24-year-old Hampton man was killed late Tuesday and his passenger seriously injured when the driver lost control of his Chevrolet Camaro, which crashed into a tree near an Interstate 64 on-ramp.

David Robert Leslie Burgess was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

A witness reported being passed by the Camaro as it sped northbound on J. Clyde Morris Boulevard shortly before the crash, Virginia State Police Trooper J.T. Dudley said.

The witness briefly lost sight of the Camaro but then turned onto the interstate on-ramp and saw the wreckage about 20 yards from the roadway. A 3-foot-tall section of one tree's trunk was bare, its bark stripped by the impact of the crash.

Paramedics and police were notified at 11:11 p.m. that a crash had taken place along the westbound I-64 on-ramp at J. Clyde Morris. When they arrived, emergency personnel found Burgess dead in the driver's seat and his passenger, a woman, lying in the grass nearby, Dudley said.

The woman was conscious but suffering from life-threatening injuries, Dudley said. Paramedics transported her to Riverside Regional Medical Center. An update on her condition was not available Wednesday.

The gray Camaro's front end was destroyed, and Burgess' body was trapped in the wreckage, which was wedged between trees and partially wrapped around another tree.

Police said neither occupant wore a seat belt.

Police painted orange stripes along skid marks indicating where the Camaro left the ramp, and they spent more than an hour on-scene reconstructing the crash. *